


The Phone Book

by partofforever (edvic)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Future, Class Differences, Explicit Sexual Content, Kept Boys, Letters, M/M, Mystery, Social Issues, Strangers to Lovers, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 13:45:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edvic/pseuds/partofforever
Summary: His days in Quart are monotonous. There's never enough credits to buy what they need. There's always fear - that they'll take his sister away, that they'll catch Ron, that they'll make him leave the club - and there's always rain. He's no longer sure what life used to be like before they sent him away. At night, puddles glow in the dark.And then the man appears.





	The Phone Book

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tomarry Bigbang 2018.
> 
> Please take a look at the [wonderful art](https://eriinyes.tumblr.com/post/177936519116/art-for-the-tomarry-big-bang-event-based-off-2i) accompanying this story - thank you so much, Erin. ♥

"Guess what was waiting for me at Hermione’s place." 

A kiss falls on the top of his head; Bill smells like sugar and cinnamon and Harry wonders if he’d taste it if he licked his face. 

He doesn't. He's sure Bill wouldn't mind it terribly, but he's so tired his eyes close on their own. His head is heavy like an iron bar. 

"Harry?" Bill is worried, he hears it in his voice, feels it in the hand touching his cheek, then forehead. "You don't look well." 

Do I ever look well?, Harry wants to ask.

Instead, he lets Bill wrap his long arms around him. Up close, he smells even sweeter. 

"Should I talk to Marcus?" 

"I'll manage," he says, thinking about their fridge and how little instants they have left. There's still the one on the back shelf, but it's for emergency use only and Harry knows it can get worse. It can always get worse. "What did you get from Hermione?" 

"A package. For you." 

Bill goes along and lets him change the topic. Harry feels thankful. 

Sometimes, he wants Bill to keep him at home, make him stay, but he knows what would it mean. Bill would have to work twice as hard to make up for his blues. 

He watches Bill reach into one of his pockets and soon his minimizer emerges. It takes some time to make it work - tech isn't Bill's best friend and this particular model is old and full of bugs no one cares to fix any longer - but in the end the package materializes in Harry's hands and he feels how heavy it is. Heavier than the last.

His hands shake only a bit - the moment always terrifies him, the first look inside - and Bill has to help him tear the lid off. 

First, he smells it. An orange. It's so fragrant he's worried he may sneeze and wake up Mo.

Then, he sees the teared paper.

"Phone book?" Bill looks at it closely. Harry spots some Albus Du where Grace tore the page apart. "It has to be ancient."

"We used to have a lot of these. Church archives," he says. 

It's odd to feel it under his fingers, paper. There are little to no books in Quart. Paper is a luxury good. 

He used to know it well, just like oranges. 

He finds five of them. Five oranges and five bags of rice. Carrots. Potatoes. Ten short-term lunchboxes. She must've gotten them out of the trash when no one was looking. On the bottom, he sees new clothes for Zo. As always, Grace knows what she's doing. There's soap there too, the grey one he used to hate so much, and three tubes of toothpaste. 

"Mr. Ricky!" Bill says and Harry has to look up from the orange in his hands.

"Mr. Ricky?" 

He hears the rustle of foil. It's gold when Bill puts it right in front of his eyes, making it hard to focus.

"You've never had it? It's Ron’s-"

He stops so suddenly Harry sees the exact moment fear crawl into his eyes. 

For a long moment he hears nothing but the ringing silence between his ears.

Then, someone knocks.

"Fuck," he hears himself say, throwing the orange inside the box again, trying to hide it, trying to hide everything as fast as he can, and Bill jumps up like a street cat, looking for some hideout. He's not supposed to be here, not at this hour, not ever. Harry isn't someone Bill should treat like a friend.

The knocking gets louder, thudding in the late hour. Harry wonders if it's still raining outside and how much mess the Greys will leave. If there'll be someone left to think about it at all. 

He thinks about Zo and how much he regrets that she ran away. With Grace, she'd be safe. With him, her life is in constant danger.

"The curtain," he mouths soundlessly, pointing Bill where to hide.

The package is gone. The knocking repeats, this time more insistent, as if someone's using their fists to get in.

"Harry?" 

He turns around so quickly his head spins. In the doorway, Zo looks at him with sleepy eyes, the shifter Ron gave her hiding in her arms. It’s a brown bunny. Harry barely stops himself from pointing out that she's walking barefoot again.

"Go back to bed," he says instead, trying to sound calm. Reliable.

"I've heard someone knocking," she says. 

As if at her command, the knocking is heard. Harry wonders how long will they knock before they ram the door down. Really, they're barely standing as they are. 

"Please, go back to bed," he says again. Zo's eyes are open wide. "I'll be back in a minute."

He's not sure if he'll be back at all - maybe they found out that Grace is sending them help and they came for him too, Harry thinks, and his heart beats faster than usually, and they'll find Bill is here and kill them all - the thoughts in his head don't give him peace. His palms are sweaty and it's the cold kind of sweat he hates. He felt it before, back in High Quart, on the day everything changed.

"I don't want to go," he hears Zo say, and she's right by his side already, the shifter perched on her arm. A lab rat. "I want to stay. With you."

He wants to be stark and send her away, but her hand is warm in his own and it makes him feel a little bit braver. Not any less terrified, but he’s not shaking anymore.

The path between Zo’s bedroom and the front door seems longer than usually, and it feels like death it waiting for them at the end of it. The lights are low - they have to be reasonable about these things, always reasonable - and their shadows look feeble on the wall, like they’re already more dead than alive, running away from misfortune only to be stuck in it.

The door handle is cold under his fingers. He makes sure Zo is standing behind him.

When he opens at last, he hears the rain. It’s falling hard, like the monsoons he’s read about in books. But there are no monsoons in Quart, only the old, toxic rain. 

In the darkness, he can’t see anything clearly.

“Harry?” Someone asks. 

It’s not the police.

“Gracie?” He hasn’t called her Gracie since he was twelve and she was ten but that’s how he thinks about her sometimes and it slips.

By the way she crashes into him Harry guesses she doesn’t mind.

“What are you doing here?”

He wants to believe she’s not real. 

Grace doesn’t speak at all.

 

* * *

 

Other days the road to Gioia is long enough to think about everything - how little instants they have left, how to tell Bill his brother is probably dead, how much more would he make if he got an offer from a Crat - but tonight even walking to Pomeran and back again wouldn't be enough to let him organize the chaos taking control of him. 

Grace ran away. Grace, the one who was their main provider for the past nineteen months-

No, he can't think about it this way. 

Just like him, she had every right to run away.

But then again, Harry knows it's different. The consequences won't be the same.

He killed. Apparently. A clean, sharp act. There was blood. There was a weapon. No tech, no death illusion - only a blade, old fashioned yet effective. He can still remember it as clearly as if he's holding it in his hands. Blue around the edges, with an opaque stone under his finger; it's one of the few memories they let him keep. To torture him, perhaps, but it doesn’t work this way.

Grace’s disobedience is more dangerous. If they'll come for her-

No, he can't think about it now. Not when he has to make money. 

No one likes a sad whore.

The rain keeps falling. The puddles under his feet glimmer green in the dark. 

 

* * *

 

“... the big news?”

He’s caught off guard. 

Marcus is looking at him from the chair across the two-way mirror, putting on silver dust. It looks good on him and Harry knows he’s doing it for the Crat visiting the club every other Wednesday. 

“You weren’t listening, were you?”

Marcus is still waiting for an answer and Harry just shrugs. He’s glad he’s on bar duty tonight. He probably wouldn’t manage to bring it up, not even for a Crat.

“Santi moved,” Marcus says, with a final touch of dust to his nose. “All the way to Pomeran.”

There’s a certain note of jealousy mixed with admiration in Marcus’ voice and Harry feels it too, the difference all Gioia’s boys know - to be paid for and to be kept are drastically different arrangements. Each of them practical, but only one offering a chance to escape life as they know it.

“You’ll get there too,” he says, because he thinks so and because he wishes it to Marcus. He wishes it to everyone but himself.

On the other side of the mirror, Marcus snorts.

In his pocket, his pad vibrates.

The crack on the screen makes the message hard to read, but it’s short and would be a bit threatening if Harry didn’t know his boss.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath.

In the mirror his reflection looks angry and tired.

 

* * *

 

Harry hates the window the most. 

He knows the others would give everything to get the window duty every single night if they could, but for him every night behind the rounded glass is a torture of uncertainty. 

Someone can recognize him. Harry doesn’t know who or how - it’s been almost two years since he left High Quart and everyone who knew him back then wouldn’t recognize him in the masked body wrapped in purple lights somewhere in a small Quart night club - but the fear it still there, no matter how much he tries to talk himself into sanity.

Tonight is even worse. 

Every sudden move in the street makes his heart skip a beat. Every glance that seems too long, every pause between songs, every credit bell - they all make him antsy and on edge.

He’s not sure if there are always this many customers on a weekday night or is he simply too nervous to think logically. Maybe it’s the rain. It makes people stop by his window for a minute, running away from the cold and sparing him a curious glance. In the purple light, their faces look unreal. 

A woman he doesn’t recognize pays thirty credits to get a glimpse of his cock. Someone else pays fifty for a dance. A group he knows - from the streets and the queue at social welfare - pays a hundred to see him come. He takes as much time as he can and thinks that if not for Bill’s help, he’d be in their place. At least he’s not cold. And they’re paying him for something he does, in a way, enjoy.

His breaks are short and with the unexpected assignment he doesn’t feel prepared. He didn’t have enough time to secure his left heel and he knows it’ll give him hell in the morning. The shoes aren’t even his size, but none of his spectators seems to mind. The cincher isn’t his either and there’s a stain on the back, but this too doesn’t bother anyone. He’s not like Marcus or Bollie or Stef - his customers rarely see him up close. Someone could notice that he’s marked and his boss isn’t stupid. It’s one thing to let him work there, at a stake much lower than any other of his boys, when he knows Harry has no one to complain to. It’s another thing to ask for trouble.

So he listens to the music and credits’ bell ringing and the AI voice telling him what his customers wish for and for a few minutes - no more than fifteen, that’s a rule - their fantasies become partially his.

It's almost two in the morning when Harry sees the man. 

He doesn't fit and so, Harry gets scared. Crats rarely stop by the window, it's poor people's fun. 

But the man doesn't look like secret police or the Greys either and Harry is a little bit too busy putting on the stockings someone paid forty credits for to focus on the stranger. If he's interested, he'll stay. It's not like Harry has any saying in it.

At three, the crowd loosens. There are still people looking at him, with the unseeing eyes of freers addicts, but no one is paying. The credits' bell stops ringing. 

He still has to stand and pose and his feet hurt. He's a bit hungry too. He thinks about his sisters again. It brings bail up his throat. 

On the other side of the window, someone collapses and falls. Through the thick glass Harry can't hear the shattering bottle as it meets the pavement.

On his side, the credits' bell rings.

"Special treat," the artificial voice says, but it's different this time and Harry knows someone paid extra for it. Instead of Lady M it's Lord J talking to him, his accent slightly foreign. Harry knows the voice alone costs two hundreds. 

In front of the window, he sees the man. He didn't notice when everyone disappeared. It's almost four.

"Would you mind?" The voice asks and the man looks at him. 

Just like everyone else, he seems half-dead in the purple light.

Harry wants to smile. He doesn't, but he wants to. He's heard the stories, from Marcus and from Stef, he's seen a few Crats at the bar before and how otherworldly they can get, with their manners and their credits, as if trying to say  _ I have the power to destroy you _ and  _ I have the power to save you. _

Harry wonders if that's why they come here, to the dirty club at the end of the road. To play gods. 

He doesn't smile but he twists, slowly, like a panther would, offering the stranger a better look at his ass.

The man's eyes never leave his face. Harry's not sure what to think about it.

It feels almost intimate, the two of them.

In the wall on his right, a hidden locker opens.

"Please, drink it for me," Lord J says, and Harry takes the vial in his hands. What’s inside is metallic and blue and he's not sure what to expect. But the screen next to the locker shows him in glowing numbers he'll get two thousand credits for it and it's enough to make him dizzy. 

The drink tastes like nothing, like it's barely there, and Harry looks at the man as if he could offer him directions. 

“Please, take off your shoes,” the man says. 

Harry thinks it’s hardly an odd request over here. Still, he’s almost thankful. The soles of his feet are burning.

There's a certain kind of hunger in the dark eyes on the other side of the window now, not the drunk one Harry sees around here a lot, or the desperate one, the one of people who could never afford him. It's heavy, but it doesn't seem cruel.

"Do you feel alright?" The man asks him through Lord J. 

In answer, he stretches like a cat. It's been a long night, but he's alright.

For the first time, the man smiles. When he does, Harry sees the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. For some reason, it makes him feel warm.

But he doesn’t smile back. Sometimes they come again looking for it.

The silence gets longer and heavier. Harry realizes the man didn’t pick a song. It’s odd but then, all rich men are odd.

“Oh,” he says suddenly, and his hand goes up to his neck, guided by instinct. He felt something.

“Everything alright?” The man asks and slowly, Harry nods.

Then, he feels it again.

It’s short and soft and if it wasn’t so unexpected, it’d be nice. Like a kiss. Or maybe a finger sliding up his arm, so lightly it feels like wind. Not that Harry knows anything about wind. But he thinks that’s how wind would feel on his skin.

Something touches his neck, right behind his left ear, and it sends a jolt down his spine. 

His eyes close.

It seems ridiculous to feel that much.

It moves, the touch, from his ear down the edge of his jaw, and this time Harry recognizes it’s a kiss. He’s alone, but there’s a tongue on his neck, and he’s getting hard so quickly he’d feel embarrassed if it wasn’t his job.

Like puppets on string, his fingers follow the ghost, and this too feels good. With his eyes closed, he can pretend there’s someone there, someone real.

When a nail brushes over his nipple, Harry gasps.

“Does it feel good?” The man asks, and once again, Harry nods.

It’s a bit overwhelming, and he wants more and more and more, and somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders how many people are looking at him, but he doesn’t want to open his eyes, not yet. The illusion is too sweet.

“Please,” the man says, and Harry imagines his face, with the purple shadow over it, “put your hands behind your head.”

Harry does as he’s told to. Suddenly, he realizes how wobbly his legs feel. He breathes, in and out, trying to control his quivering muscles, and the man waits. Harry wonders how many minutes has passed already; if the man will pay for more.

At the bottom of his stomach, he feels a weight settle. It’s hot and it twists and he’d wish he could touch himself if the man wasn’t right there, with his pad or his watch or whatever high end tech he’s using. 

It feels good. Harry wonders what exactly is that man getting out of it and that it’d probably creep him out more if he could think clearly. Right now, his own breathing is his main focus, the rise and fall of his lungs, the expansion, unsteady and betraying how much it affects him, the touch, the lack of it.

He felt it before, he thinks, and he tries to catch the thought and name it. 

Then, with his arms exposed, the man starts again from the top and Harry makes a sound of frustration.

From his pointy elbows, down, down, so slowly he thinks he may go crazy, the ghost of touch slides up and down, like feathers, pressing down when he expects it the least. He never knew something so simple could feel this good.

He can't stop shivering. It's not the cold, Harry thinks, or exhaustion. It's standing there, no more naked than he was at the beginning of the long night, and wanting.

He’d only ever wanted one thing as much as he wants the man to touch him. 

The man pinches him, out of nowhere, and red flashes under Harry’s eyes.

He feels devine.

Nothing compares to this, nothing. 

He thinks about that one time he let Marco touch him and how Marco let him do the same - for practice, only for practice, that’s what they both said - and how much he loved Marco’s fingers on him, how fixated his eyes were on them, watching his own skin move under the touch, but this - this is more. 

He’s burning.

It fills him from the tips of his fingers to his curling toes.

His arms ache from trying to keep them up. 

“Please,” he says, not sure what he’s asking for, not sure if the man can hear him through the glass. The only thing he knows is that his legs are trembling and his cock hasn’t been this hard in months. 

For a long moment he feels nothing. It’s cruel and Harry wonders if the man has simply left, leaving him on the edge; if that’s what he wanted, what he paid for.

But then, when he's ready to open his eyes and check the hour, something warm cups him through the fabric and air leaves his lungs with a swish.

He's afraid his legs may give any moment.

"Please," the man says through Lord J, "breathe."

Harry thinks he'd snort if he wasn't so gone. 

But he bites his lips and breathes, and a finger caresses his cheek.

"You're lovely," the man says.

Harry doesn't believe him, but it's a nice thing to hear. People rarely say anything to him.

The warmth against his cock is formed like a palm and when it curls, like fingers would, his knees bend to follow.

It's so hard to stand still and he's not sure if he's supposed to move, and he makes a sound, something halfway between impatient, angry and pleading. 

This man wants to destroy him, this must be it.

The fingers move again, slow and pleasantly warm, light and teasing and then scraping, just a bit, and he tries to ease into it somehow, let it take him. It feels so nice.

His hips move. His arms hurt.

The hand on his cheek doesn't disappear. It's like the man is standing right in front of him, as if he could lean into him.

He doesn't feel cold anymore. What was cold - his toes, his ears, his fingertips - is now burning. His skin is itching, the good way. Harry knows it's anticipation.

The knot in his stomach twists and turns, and he doesn't care if anyone can see him. It feels so good to be taken care of.

His mouth part in a breathless  _ oh _ . 

Then, his nose hit the glass.

"Fuck," he hears the man say. "I'm sorry."

There's a dull pain all over his skull, thudding with dark spots when he opens his eyes.

"Please," he says. "Don't stop."

The man is standing so close to the glass Harry can see how the expression on his face changes. He's not sure if he's ever seen so many emotions on a man's face. 

"Please," the man says, his eyes worried, "put your hands on the window."

He follows so quickly he almost loses his balance again. It's ridiculous.

When Harry feels the touch again, it’s nowhere near where he wants it, pressing against the round ball of his right arm. 

He knows he’s making a face.

“Don’t be angry with me,” the man says through Lord J. Harry wonders what his voice sounds like. He thinks it’s softer. The man says  _ please  _ a lot.

The warmth travels down, untying his muscles, pressing where they hurt. It’s generous and Harry can’t understand why. 

A nail teases his nipple. 

He’s trying to keep his breathing slow, hold himself steady, but the man knows where to touch him, how to touch him. 

His muscles flutter when the touch moves again, down, down, in a straight line between his throat and the dip of his stomach. It’s light, like petting a wild animal, he thinks, and the thought makes him lightheaded. 

He feels so full, so good. If he’s aching, it’s only because he wants more.

The palm slides around him easily, its shape perfect.

Harry arches his back more. Another sound escapes his throat. 

This man makes him feel so many things at once.

Trying to breathe, he presses against the touch. This time, it doesn't go away.

"You're lovely," the man says again, but Harry barely hears him.

Instead, he thrusts up faster, feeling the fabric move against his skin, against the warmth too. 

He imagines the man closer, so close he could smell his sweat, lick it off his neck, move against him for real. It’s a safe fantasy, one he’ll let go as soon as the night ends, and for now, it’s enough. 

“Don’t stop,” Harry says, and even if the man can’t hear him, he listens.

His forehead presses into the glass. His eyes close again. He knows the man is still watching. It makes him feel something new.

It’s not enough. It’s too much at the same time.

When he comes, muscles tightening right before even more warmth floods him, his breathing gets hoarse. 

If not the window in front of him, he’d be lying on the floor. Everything around him keeps swinging, the purple lights and the man, his eyes doubling.

“Sit down,” he hears the voice say, but it’s hard to listen to it. “Breathe with me.”

Harry wishes he could hear the man and not the voice. Maybe it would be easier to follow if it felt a bit more human.

His legs are trembling.

“Please, sit down,” the man says again.

His hand slide down the glass.

“Slowly,” he hears the voice say, just in time - he’s nearly fallen down, onto the floor. When he reaches it at last, eyes half-closed, filtering the view, the man says, “Breathe.”

Harry realizes his fingers are shaking when he tries to bring them up to his heart, to steady its beat. Everything inside him feels displaced, like a house someone left open during a storm, and he’s only vaguely aware of himself. 

Breathing is hard. His heart keeps beating fast and his lungs give up halfway through the inhale, leaving him dizzy. 

It’s cold again, so cold he starts shivering.

But the man is still there. Through the voice, he breathes loud enough for Harry to listen to it and then to follow, try to.

He doesn’t recognize this feeling, can’t find a name for it. It’s not a bad one, he thinks. It’s a bit drowsy.

He’s not sure how long it takes him to breathe properly again. Somewhere in the back of his mind Harry realizes this man is paying for every minute and he can’t understand why. He’s never heard of anything like this, neither in this club nor any other he’s worked at before.

Harry listens to the man breathe carefully now. For some reason, it’s precious. 

He wonders if that’s what affection may look like, between real people, but as soon as the thought forms, he wants to get rid of it. There’s no affection here. Only a transaction, mutually beneficial even if doesn’t know how.

The world around him starts regaining its contour. Under his knees, the floor is cold. His legs feel numb.

When he tries to move, it’s difficult. His left feet seems absent, as if it has left his body altogether, and instead of standing up, he almost falls on his face. Something in him wishes he could be home already, on the couch. He doesn’t even want to shower.

Something brushes his brow. 

It’s not the same as before, lighter and questioning it seems, and Harry looks up, trying to focus.

The man is still there, the shadows on his face as purple as they were when Harry has looked at him last time.

He’s smiling. Harry isn’t sure why.

It’s not the kind of smile he’s seen on Crats around here or the smile Bill offers him in the morning. It’s not like Zo’s smile either. 

The man is smiling, but it’s a sad smile.

“Alright?” The man asks, and Harry reads it on his lips.

He’s tired but he nods. When he tries to get up again, a loud yawn catches him off guard and once more, he has to stay down. His insides shake with the power of it and the stretch is almost painful, but he feels his body again, all of it.

“I think your time is up,” the man says, and Lord J’s voice is heard.

It’s true - the clock is nearing five. Harry has no idea how did he miss all this time going by. 

“Goodnight,” the man says. Harry feels a finger on his cheek. 

He knows he shouldn’t, but he smiles. 

He’s seen the credits’ counter. This man has paid for two months of his sisters’ lives. He deserves a smile.

“Goodnight,” Harry says back, touching his cheek where the phantom finger was just a moment ago.


End file.
